Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid ejection apparatus and a liquid ejection method used to eject a liquid such as ink.
Description of the Related Art
In a recent inkjet liquid ejection head serving as a liquid ejection head ejecting liquid ink, there has been a demand for suppressing blurred printing caused by the insufficient supply of ink in order to meet an increase in image quality and printing speed. As a reason of blurred images, pressure loss in a passage supplying ink to an ink ejection opening is exemplified. Meanwhile, there is a tendency that the amount of a coloring material or a resin material in the ink increases to obtain high image quality. In addition, there is a tendency that a width of an ink passage decreases in accordance with the highly dense arrangement of the ejection openings. For these reasons, an increase in pressure loss accompanied by an increase in printing speed causes big problems.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-280246 discloses a method of predicting a printing duty from print data and controlling an ink flow amount in response to the printing duty so that an average ink flow amount for all ejection openings becomes a predetermined flow amount. Meanwhile, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-69419 discloses a method of supplying ink to a plurality of ejection openings of a liquid ejection head through a plurality of branched supply paths in accordance with an increase in length of the liquid ejection head.
However, in the method of supplying the ink to the plurality of ejection openings of the liquid ejection head through the plurality of branched supply paths, there is concern that the ink may not be sufficiently supplied to a local part of the liquid ejection head when the ink flow amount is controlled on the basis of the average ink flow amount for all ejection openings as disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-280246.